Peter Coffee, one of my favorite writers because he actually knows what he’s talking about, wrote a column entitled A Healthy IT Outlook in which he opines that the medical sector holds the key to innovation and growth. Specifically, he says:

Health care technology and practice have long been sources of some of the best case studies available to eWEEK’s analysts. Medicine adopts new technology aggressively and has a tradition of extensive discussion and peer review of new techniques, whether we’re talking about emergency readiness or hospital management or international assistance.

Enterprise developers and managers should take advantage of that propensity to share lessons learned in medicine that may have broad applicability elsewhere. For that matter, no enterprise of any size can safely neglect the impact of health care costs, and the ripple effects of health information handling mandates, on its human resources systems and management practices: Supply-chain opportunities and challenges will continue to reshape the outward face of enterprise IT, but the need to contain health costs and address an evolving spectrum of medical needs will define much of the enterprise’s internal IT agenda.